Chris Buck of Welsh rock trio Cardinal Black told us about his love for a classic Guns N' Roses lick...
Chris Buck: I’m 12 years old and I’m lying in bed, headphones in, iPod in hand, listening to the greatest rock album ever made for the first time. I’d not long started playing guitar and someone suggested that I ‘might like Guns N’ Roses’. In retrospect, the name must have rung a bell - my parents both loved music and even though neither of them ‘played’, there was always music on around the house or in the car. The Beatles, the Stones, Springsteen, ABBA, Phil Collins, Bryan Adams - it’s inconceivable that I wouldn’t have at least heard Sweet Child O’ Mine in passing at some point. When I first sat down to listen to Appetite For Destruction, though, I had no idea that the next 53 minutes would quite literally change my life.
From the almost imperceptible thud and opening chime of Welcome To The Jungle, I was hopelessly hooked. Enthralled. Utterly transfixed. The groove, the sleaze, the swagger, the angst - it was mesmeric and by the time I got to track 5, "Mr. Brownstone," my (Bad) Obsession with Guns N’ Roses was a fundamental part of my DNA. I had no idea who Mr. Brownstone was, or why Axl was ‘dancing’ with him but it didn’t matter - much like its subject matter, it was infectious. The intro, the riff, the groove, the attitude - there’s something almost conversational about the ping pong interplay of Slash and Izzy’s guitar parts, seemingly stumbling over one another but still somehow in step. It was everything that I’d been looking for in music. It’s perfection. Even now, 23 years on, hearing it elicits the same sense of excitement and danger as it did the first time.
I could easily have picked any number of tracks from Appetite - "Welcome to the Jungle," "Paradise City," "Sweet Child O’ Mine," "Rocket Queen," "Nightrain"... you’d be hard pushed to find a track on that record that didn’t leave an indelible mark on my psyche or or for which I couldn't pinpoint a favorite bootleg recording from some long-forgotten show on a long-forgotten tour 39 years ago. But, of all the riffs on that record, it’s "Mr. Brownstone" that keeps me coming back. It turns out that a little wouldn’t do it.
Cardinal Black's Second Sign of Life album is out January 29.
